Service providers who rely on appointments or reservations sometimes struggle with openings in their calendar due to rescheduling, cancellations, no shows, as well as inconvenient time slots. Calendar appointment booking capacity can be significantly impacted (e.g., by 20-50%) based on these factors. Current methods for handling these dynamic schedule changes may include contacting dormant clients, attempts to shift appointments around, or overbooking an appointment. In most cases, these continue to be a manual, tedious process (i.e., contacting clients by phone), and may risk alienating some customers. In any case, industry standard fulfillment rates are reportedly only at about 20% for filling these openings.
At the other end of the spectrum, service providers may have a long wait list for the most convenient or desirable time slots, because of work, school, seasonal or other schedule-related factors that can cause demand to spike in these time slots. In certain cases, the service provider may accommodate urgent requests for these time-slots by utilizing a waiting list and using a manual, inefficient process to manage any last-minute openings. Booking an appointment far into the future has also been shown to increase the likelihood of cancellations or reschedules, thus feeding into problems such as cancellations, no shows, etc. It is estimated that about 40% of appointments scheduled more than 20 days ahead eventually get canceled or result in no-shows. It has been a challenge for service providers to bridge the imbalance in demand for services.